Pay Attention

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Heart Warming

My heart grows cold.

Day after day, minute after minute, the chill creeps in. Slowly stalking me, its patience is feline. The cold need not rush, its prey can never escape.

Why must the world be this way? Like Solomon I look around at the pursuit of knowledge or wealth or even love, and I cry out "Vanity!" It is all vanity, silly flower petals that will only wilt as the seasons change. Wilt and then die.

Who but God can comfort the comfortless? Yet, is God's comfort anything more than a psychosis of the human mind? A chemical imbalance that leads us to believe in an omnipotent being who spends his time caring about insignificant, finite humans? Where is this God, point to him and let the world see...

Those thoughts make me shudder. I shiver now. The cold creeps onward, slowly like floodwaters, drowning passion and hope. Where is my stronghold, where is my safety?

I cling to God. I cannot point to him. I cannot produce his being for the satisfaction of others or even myself. I only have this blind faith, blind like Justice is blind, blind like bats are blind. My sonar is my heart.

Who can offer me more?

Not corrupt officials, consumed by the lusts of their flesh and their eyes, overcome by pride. They offer no succor, they offer no wisdom, they offer no relief. They offer nothing but a high-fructose serving of hope, a Splenda infused helping of faith. Master forgers, they traffic in illusion.

Who but God offers me more?

The cold grows. So cold it's almost warm. My heart burns with the cold, a raging inferno of ice, a glacial bonfire. Slowly, slowly it beats, its rhythm the key to my questions. Yet, I cannot find the beat. I've always lacked rhythm. Instead I stumble then fall. My feet followed the path of my heart and could not support me. I fall, and I hear my heart beat.

That's not "faith" that's a knowing that transcends faith, transcends sense testimony, a knowing that says God is here, even though, to the untrained eye, He's nowhere to be found.

Move the letters around in "nowhere" and you have "now here" which is where God is always.

"Why must the world be this way?"

It is the way it is, because there's no other way it can be. Let me paraphrase a passage you're all too familiar with: "It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles, but what comes out."

We're too often using Life to create the worse of the worse rather than the best of the best.

Life is the mechanism by which this is done. It is the perfect process by which we create our many disparate realities.

Change output, and you change your experiences. And I know that's a tall order when you're not the one responsible for everything you're seeing, and everything that's being created, at least not at the individual level.

"Where is this God, point to him and let the world see..."

I'll answer you in the words of Jesus, as recorded by Thomas, in "The Gospel According to Thomas":

"(50) Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, 'It is movement and repose.'"

This movement cannot be denied. It's for what the atheist search, and cannot find. It's this "movement" in you that calls to you, and for which you crave.

God is seen, but not seen, felt, but not felt. You feel Him, and see Him, because you choose to.

Nothing is forced, nothing is demanded. All must demand for themselves: "Show me!"

"A chemical imbalance that leads us to believe in an omnipotent being who spends his time caring about insignificant, finite humans?"

First, you're not your body. That's an illusion. A pretty good one to be sure, but still an illusion.

Second, you're not "insignificant," nor "finite," nor "flesh and blood." You're the son of the "Most High," here to carry out the Holiest of purposes: to co-create with God in what is known as matter.

Ask Dannion Brinkley, and he'll call you a "hero," for your decision. You're here on a most wondrous, divine, mission, for a grand purpose: to experience what you know of yourself, and for God to experience what He knows of Himself through you.

Finally, you're awesomely created and awesomely maintained. You fill God's heart with joy, and He smiles just to think of you, which She does often.

God delights in you, just as you do in your offspring. With tender mercy and care He holds you in His arms and says, "This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased."

[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.